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Eric Cartman
Eric Theodore Cartman, usually referred to as just Cartman, is one of the main characters, along with Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, and Kenny McCormick. Cartman is sometimes the main antagonist of an episode, for example Trapper Keeper. None of the other three main children consider Cartman their friend and do not know why they started hanging out with him in the first place, however, he is usually Kyle's first choice when he breaks his friendship with Stan. In earlier episodes, Kenny was his best friend, however, in later seasons, Butters Stotch is usually depicted as such. Cartman was the first one of the boys to be shown without his hat, as seen in "Merry Christmas Charlie Manson!". He also weighs 90 pounds, as revealed in "Weight Gain 4000". Appearance Cartman wears a red jacket, yellow mittens, a blue hat with a yellow puff ball on top, brown pants, black shoes, and white socks (as seen in "Super Fun Time"). He sometimes wears a green t-shirt with a bear picture on under his jacket, a white tank top, and occasionally a dark red t-shirt. He has medium-brown hair and a double-chin. He also has triangular-shaped eyebrows, in contrast to the other main boys' rectangular ones. Even though Cartman is overweight, he always denies it (especially in the earlier seasons) by saying, "I'm not fat, I'm just big-boned", or some variation thereof. However, as seen in "Merry Christmas Charlie Manson!" and "Cartmanland", his weight problem may be, in truth, be genetic and runs in the family, as seen by the fact that, with the exception of his mother an aunt, and a cousin, his entire family is extremely overweight. But in "Fat Camp", when he tells his mother to talk about how he's big boned and such, she instead says, "Those were all lies, sweetie, you're just fat." In "Tsst", he is slightly thinner, although in later episodes, he was shown to have regained the lost weight. Cartman likely has blue irises, as, due to the events of "The Succubus", he has Kenny's eyes, which were shown with blue in "Starvin' Marvin". In Season 20, he wears a t-shirt with the words "Token's life matters". Personality Cartman is described in various terms, in short, he is an evil, vicious, angry, self-absorbed, immature, destructive, sarcastic, snooty, loud-mouthed, lazy, and insane child. He is the most foul-mouthed character in the show. He is also racist and stereotypes almost everyone he sees. The very dark, usually disturbing undertones to his personality often hint at an extreme mental imbalance. Apart from being portrayed as having a general lack of moral responsibility or social conscience, he also seems to take pleasure from others' misfortune and is generally unable to show empathy, although there have been exceptions, such as in "How to Eat with Your Butt." Despite the severity of his actions, it is likely that they are a type of emotional defense mechanism against his insecurity and (potential) confused sexuality. This "defense", however, does not seem to be impenetrable, as evidenced by "1%". This has been parodied as well, in the cliché of a typical villain becoming benevolent. In these episodes, he usually convinces Kyle that he has good intentions, such as in the "Cartoon Wars" two-parter, where Cartman appears to Kyle that he is concerned about people's safety at the beginning, but it is later shown to only have been doing it to get Family Guy off the air. In the "Do the Handicapped Go to Hell?" and "Probably" two-parter, Kyle and many others fall for Cartman's apparently "good intentions" for trying to prevent the children of South Park from going to hell. However, it is revealed that he only did it so he could earn money. In "Kenny Dies", he is distraught at Kenny's impending death leading Kyle to console him. Later when his supposedly real motives were revealed, knowing how Cartman typically is, Kyle promptly fights him in Kenny's defense, although Cartman was genuinely distraught over Kenny's illness before and after he learns that he can benefit from it. This clearly shows that Cartman went through Congress for Kenny and reveals that he does not have a healthy way of dealing with the death of his friend. Cartman can, on rare occasions, show compassion towards cats, as in "Major Boobage" in which he hides cats in his attic from the authorities. This compassion hints that he has not progressed to be a full sociopath. In "The Death of Eric Cartman", Kyle sums up Cartman's character as a "fat, racist, self-centered, intolerant, manipulative sociopath". History Eric Cartman attends South Park Elementary as part of Mr. Garrison's class. During the show's first 58 episodes, Cartman and the other main characters are in the third grade, after which they move on to the fourth grade. He is an only child being raised by Liane Cartman, a promiscuous single mother. In "Cartman's Mom Is Still a Dirty Slut" (1998), Liane Cartman claims to be a hermaphrodite when she also claims to be the father of Cartman and that she did not know the woman who gave birth to Cartman.5 However, the season 14 (2010) episode "201" later reveals that Liane actually is his mother, and that his true biological father is Jack Tenorman, a fictional former player for the Denver Broncos whom Cartman arranged to be killed in the season five (2001) episode "Scott Tenorman Must Die", making Cartman and Scott Tenorman half-brothers and putting Liane's intersexual identity in question. Among the show's main child characters, Cartman is distinguished as "the fat kid", and his obesity is a continuing subject of insults and ridicule from other characters throughout the show's run. Other children and classmates are alienated by Cartman's insensitive, racist, xenophobic, anti-semitic, lazy, self-righteous behavior, but are occasionally influenced by his obtrusive, manipulative, and propagandist antics. Kyle, who is Jewish, is often the target of Cartman's slander and anti-Semitic insults. The two have shared an enmity since the show's beginnings, and their rivalry has become significantly more pronounced as the series has progressed, with Cartman even routinely exposing Kyle to physical endangerment. Kyle has intentionally endangered Cartman as well by convincing him in "Fatbeard" to go to Somalia in hopes that he will be killed. However, at other times, Kyle is an enthusiastic participant in Cartman's schemes and Cartman is sometimes seen actually being nice to Kyle in some instances. Despite being intolerant of other cultures, Cartman displays an aptitude for learning foreign languages. In the episode "My Future Self n' Me" when he starts "Parental Revenge Corp", he speaks Spanish to his Latino workers, though he may have learned the language merely from a practical standpoint in order to better exploit a labor pool. He also knows German, and once spoke a few phrases while dressed up as Adolf Hitler while promoting the extermination of Jews to an oblivious audience that did not speak German. Cartman can also be seen speaking broken German with an American accent in Season 15 Episode 2 "Funnybot". Conversely in one episode ("Major Boobage") Cartman acts as an Oskar Schindler character for the town's cats, a rare case of a subplot based on Cartman's altruism. 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